I interrupted editing today yesterday to find the lyrics to Utada Hikaru's "Keep Tryin'." I'll post them, kanji and all, but with furigana so if you can read kana, you can read the lyrics. Maybe I'll also write it out in romaji (for non-Japanese studiers, that means writing it out in roman letters--the letters of our alphabet--so you can read it even if you don't read Japanese).

Then I'm going to translate it--but it will be a pretty literal translation. In other words, it will tell you what the song says, but you won't be able to sing the English words to the tune or anything like that. That would be a whole extra step--creating a song in English that more or less matched the Japanese one and could be sung to the same tune. I know for some of her songs (like the Kingdom Hearts II one) there are both English and Japanese versions, but I don't know how similar they are.

I'm slipping further and further behind in Nano, but at least I'm making some progress each day. I reached 9,354 words today, I think.

“Oh, this is stupid,” said Mary. “That stuff should just go in the back of the van. Let’s just get Mr. M.” She turned to go, but Shayne grabbed her arm. “Don’t do that,” he said seriously. “Mr. M said not to bother him. You don’t know what’s going on in there.” Mary snorted. “Yeah right. Nothing’s going on in there that I didn’t used to see at home. He’s just drinking, Shayne! Be real.” But Shayne planted himself in front of Mary, and though he was skinny, he was as tall as she was and full of determination. He crossed his arms. “Don’t go in there.” “Come on Shayne! Ed, tell him he’s wrong.” Ed laughed and looked away. The standoff continued. “C’mon man,” said Ed ackwardly. “That demon stuff, it’s just Mr. M’s story. Like the stories I make up. Like the one last night about the sleeping bag.” “That’s not true,” said Shayne. “I-“ A door slammed. Mr. M. appeared. “What’s going on here?” he growled. “It’s late. We have a show tomorrow; you all should be ready for bed.” He started lifting boxes into the back of the van. “Don’t stand around; help me with these!” The children helped move the stacked boxes into the van, and in less than fifteen minutes Mary and Melanie had the van to themselves. “Can I see my postcard?” asked Melanie. Mary turned on a flashlight, found the box, and took out the postcard. Melanie nodded, satisfied. She snuggled down into the sleeping bag. The light from the flashlight glinted on some hair on it; she lifted it up. It was a couple of inches long, black with a white tip. “Look,” she said, holding it out where Mary could see. “What? What is it? Looks like cat hair.” “It was on my sleeping bag,” said Melanie slowly. “Ed said that the girl who had my sleeping bag had cats. He said her favorite was black and white, and this hair is black and white.” “Oh, don’t take that story too seriously. It was just for fun.” “But the cat hair!” “So he probably noticed it when he was making up the story, and thought to add in cats, that’s all. Let’s go to sleep.” She turned off the flashlight, and the darkness immediately pressed in. Melanie slid closer to Mary. “You don’t think there are any demons still hanging around the van, do you?” she asked. “Nah, the only demons are in Mr. M’s head. Sometimes grownups have problems—ask the boys, they’ll tell you the same.” “Shayne believes there are demons.” “Well, that’s just Shayne. He used to live with his grandmother, and she believed all kinds of stuff. Just because someone believes something doesn’t make it true.” “Does not believing something make it not true?” “Just go to sleep, Melanie.”

BTW, if you look at my buddy list you'll see you're doing pretty good. And a lot of those people are quite accomplished writers.

Once you get to the end of the novel, it's common to zoom up in wordcount. Depending on how long yours turns out to be, you might get a big spurt before the end of the month, if you just keep going steadily now.

I would love to see your translation. I want to ask your advice on studying Japanese, but I'll do that in email or IM. (I already asked doubt72, who was helpful, of course.) After I finish this novel, that's my next goal.

Glad you like it--I'm enjoying it! Will you be putting up more excerpts too? (I ask, but I haven't been to the NaNo site for two days, so I should probably take a look before asking...)

Re: Japanese, ask away--I'll help as best I can :-) though, my best advice is to find a class, just because, like with NaNo, having other people and working to a requirement makes you work harder and feel more committed (in my experience, anyway...)

I haven't had any long portions that didn't have glaring bits of handwaving in them for a while, so I haven't changed the excerpt on the NaNo site. I can't even get the flash page to show the excerpt; the profile page just gives up on me!

I suppose I could post snippets with LJ updates. It's difficult, because as soon as I write something I always think it's complete dreck. Sometimes I'm right, and sometimes not. Kind of nervewracking to just go with not knowing...

A class, hm? There is one I could take, but it's a 40 mile drive, one way. I suspect the gas cost and time required might be a bit much! We'll see, though. Thanks! :)